I just got a new laptop and the first thing i did was download this game. i can get it to start up by clicking the shortcut and then my screen goes black.. then it glitches and the black screen covers 2/3s of my screen.. then it glitches again into an even smaller black screen! it just crashes after that. any suggestions? I'm running windows 10 and have tried every compatibility setting and ive uninstalled and reinstalled the game twice.

What's the on-board video? I forget which set (nVidia, maybe?) but Shadowplay is a known problem. Disable that (or similar for whatever you have) and see.

Try the widescreen hack : http://www.gog.com/forum/pharaoh_cleopatra/widescreen_patches/page1
Apparently that fixes several stability issues

The two suggestions above are sound solutions for many of the issues people see in the games. Shadowplay (or any overlay) messes with the game engine so it creates blank screens / crashes the game, with the widescreen hack stabilising the game better.

I just had this issue and solved it. The game has no support for dual screens, so if you're using two monitors you need to change your settings to only use one of them. It's a bit of a pain, but for the gem this game is its worth the small hassle.

I played it for at least a week, but I accidentally left it on overnight. When I came back to my computer, it had crashed and now it won't open. I have restarted my computer, uninstalled/reinstalled, and downloaded new codecs to see if there was something that messed it up. It opens to the triangle logo screen, then goes black and immediately crashes. Does anyone know what I did? Or how I can fix it? I

Disable any overlays you may have running (Steam, GOG Galaxy, Shadowplay etc), they conflict with the game and cause a crash.